Dark tale has dashes of hope and humour
The author of The Fault in Our Stars returns with a tale of teen anxiety and OCD, writes Sandie Angulo Chen.
Turtles All the Way Down is bestselling author John Green’s first novel since 2012’s runaway success, The Fault in Our Stars. While that book tackled the issue of teens with cancer, this one centres on a protagonist suffering from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviour. Green, who has publicly shared he also has OCD, based the main character’s struggles on his own lived experience.
As in all of Green’s books, the teen characters are unabashed nerds: incredibly intelligent, well read, and able to discuss everything from architecture and art to philosophy and microbiology as easily as they talk about Star Wars trivia and the joys of fan fiction. Parents who read this book with their teens should have a host of topics to discuss with them, starting with the importance of adolescent mental health.
Indianapolis 16-year-old Aza Holmes struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, repetitive intrusive thoughts and extreme anxiety. Aza has a loyal best friend, Daisy Ramirez, an enthusiastic extrovert, who can talk about anything with anyone.
When a local billionaire goes missing and the police offer a $100,000 reward for information about his whereabouts, Daisy recalls that Aza had attended grief camp with the billionaire’s son, Davis. Daisy, who comes from a low-income family, persuades Aza to play detective with her and get reacquainted with Davis as $100,000 would help them both go to college. Once Aza meets Davis again, however, they rekindle a bond that equally thrills and terrifies Aza.
John Green delves deeper into the dark reaches of the teenage brain than ever before, creating a remarkable if occasionally hard-to-read story about a girl living with anxiety and OCD. While neither the protagonist nor the simple plot is as initially engaging as those in The Fault in Our Stars or Paper Towns, the story takes off once Aza rediscovers Davis.
Like Aza’s unique name (from A to Z to back again), there are endless possibilities for conversation points stemming from Green’s themes. There are also extended therapy sessions, mini-lessons in the biological importance of the tuatara, and a great deal of existential angst.
Green inserts gentle doses of humour, usually courtesy of Aza’s vivacious best friend Daisy (who writes Star Wars fan fiction as a hobby), but this is ultimately a dark book about the trappings of mental illness. It also has one of the most memorable endings in Young Adult literature. Green doesn’t write happily-ever-after books but ones about the hope and love of moving forward, no matter how difficult that might seem. - TNS